


The Center of it All

by TheScorpion



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: F/M, Reminiscing, a little meta maybe, too meta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:57:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheScorpion/pseuds/TheScorpion
Summary: 1990s. Lestat reminisces about the lead up to his first book and the fall out.
Kudos: 2





	The Center of it All

They are tiresome nights when I find myself thinking about her. Usually, I put an abrupt stop to it the moment I realize what I’m doing. Oh, she is there in my memory, of course. In my veins. I will never say she is not part of me. But why should I think about it? About her at all? The book was catharsis. My second book. Or it should have been. There are better things to think about.

Of course, it is just when I tell myself this that everything else ceases to exist.

You, who have heard those rock and roll songs of mine that I blasted across the world, you can well imagine the inconvenience of that particular explosion of my naiveté. Damned. God damned inconvenience.

Two centuries in love with a woman I barely knew. In love with a woman I could not even say I had properly met. Waiting. Secretly in love with a Goddess, while following no creed in life at all. Only to finally have her, truly have her, and learn she was not who I wanted her to be. Funny how things like that work.

I am not thinking of her right now. I am thinking of this empty garden and the reflection of the moon in the water there. The ripples surrounding it like perfect acolytes, as if the very celestial orb itself has dropped right down out of the sky and into their midst, long awaited and flawlessly received.

All right, damn it, I’m thinking of her.

There was an hour one night that she spent tracing the outline of my hand with her little white fingers while we did not bother with words spoken aloud. Her hands were so small, nothing like a woman’s of this time. I would nearly call them child-like, but now I am thinking of Claudia. As bitter cold as my little daughter was, her hands felt practically human compared to these. These ancient fingertips ran down between each of mine like tiny ice snakes. Very small snakes made of ice. 

Well, honestly, you can’t always expect me to spontaneously invent brilliant literary analogies, can you?

I don’t believe in editors. My words are my words. When I wrote the first book, Christine—do you remember Christine? Wonderful Christine. Christine, she said to me, “This is good, it is. Once we get the draft back from the editors—”

“No,” I cut her off as I paced about her office. “No drafts. It is what it is, as they say. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”

“But—”

“There’s really nothing more to be said!”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have shouted. When she winced, her fingertip slipped against the paper's edge, sliced by the dot matrix. She had been stroking the manuscript, nearly caressing it, knowing what it was worth. Blood swelled from the cut, its scent blooming into the air conditioning like metal flowers. Tangy, copper, it smelled like money, and she immediately popped the finger into her mouth and sucked.

I had stopped pacing. It was a moment before she noticed me staring.

“Sorry,” she muttered, and shook her hand out, her breath hissing between her teeth like steam. “Look,” she continued, “it’s customary for there to be editing. If it’s the confidentiality you’re worried about, you can rest easy. These are professionals, and it’s air tight. You’re a first-time author, and you—”

“Christine.”

She realized then that I was still staring. A small streak of blood smeared the top page of the manuscript. Just to the left of my name.

“Oh, damn.” She frowned and shook her head in apology. Plucking a paper tissue from the cardboard box on the corner of the desk, she took a moment to exhale slowly. “You have to listen to me, though. This book, it’s not finished until it’s edited and goes through at least two more drafts. It really is customary.”

“Not finished?” I took a step back from the desk and folded my arms stiffly, my eyes following her hands, watching them dance as she dabbed at the page with the tissue, and then she wrapped the flimsy white thing around her weeping finger.

She sighed and studied me for a minute, her lips pursed. I knew what was going through her mind. She would have it edited whether I liked it or not. I had put it in her power to make my outrageous project successful, and she wanted the profit in store.

“It is finished!” I insisted. “It could not be more finished! I tell you, there is nothing more to it. How could you say it is not finished? What more is there? What is not right about it? What could you possibly—?” I cut myself off this time and resumed pacing, my motorcycle boots clunking her expensive hardwood floor with each frustrated step.

I’ll give her credit for taking the time to consider and choose her approach carefully. “This woman you write about…”

“Gabrielle?”

“No, the frozen one, the ancient one.”

“Akasha.” I stopped pacing again, but this time I did not look at her.

“Well, that part of the story—”

“Story!”

“That part. Her. She… Well, I feel like this is where the center of it all lies. That’s what it’s all about. And it needs more of her.”

I laughed aloud.

“I’d like more of her,” Christine continued, watching me.

“Well, damn it, so would I!” I shook my head and pressed my hands to my face. The blood scent was getting to be too good. “But that’s all there is, my dear, it really is.”

“Couldn’t you just write…or, well, let the editors guide you. It’s all here, but they’ll polish it. They’ll take what’s here and suggest something, point the story in a solid direction. Fine-tune the purpose.”

“Don’t speak of this like it’s a work of fiction to be embellished.” I crossed to the desk and moved around it to her side, laughing again, feeling what was inside my chest swell too tightly. “Don’t you think I want more of her? Don’t you think I’ve been wanting more since I first laid eyes on her? Since before then, when I first heard the tale?”

I took her hand between my own. The paper tissue felt like velvet. “Don’t you think, Christine, cherie, that that is exactly why she is what it is all about?” 

The tissue fell to the desk. Her blood that night did not taste quite like money.

Naturally, I acquired a different agent for the second book.

To this day, they ask me why I wrote it. Wrote of her. Why I sat night after night at the word processing machine, letting my tears slide between my fingers and into the keyboard like little snakes made of ice.

Our time together was so brief. Only a few nights, a few collected hours end to end after centuries of waiting. And none of it was what I wanted. That hour she spent tracing my hand, touching my new flesh, hardened and brightened to gleam like her own, it was an hour of waiting. What was to come? Damned lovely hour, but nonetheless, waiting.

And when she finally spoke, they were not the words I wanted to hear.

“We are the same now,” she’d said. “Lestat, you and I. You are now strong enough to do all that I require of you.”

“I dreamt of us together.”

But she would not let me continue. “Do you not think that I know all this? Lestat, you must not exist in the past, like those revenants of our kind. Those who have been destroyed. We transcend, you and I. It is to the future I look now. It is of the future I wish to speak.”

I did not like what she saw there. I did not like what I saw in her as the flames of that future flickered in her ruminating eyes. I did not like _her_.

And yet, even now, ripples in garden water still make the nights tiresome, still bump against my heart, off-time with the beats. Acolytes. Everything is like that, really.

I put my hand up against the limb of a tree and close my eyes to shut out the reflections. This tree is old, but not older than I. The limb is smooth, worn free of bark. Or perhaps it is not the sort that ever grows a rough exterior. I only have myself to blame for not even bothering to look.

Far off in the distance, the world goes on without me. Without her. You see, _with_ her, it would not have gone on at all. It turns out, that is what it had been all about. And now that she’s gone… Well, I’m not waiting anymore. There are better things to think about. Or there should be.

So what’s it all about now, you wonder? Damned if I know. Try asking an editor.


End file.
